Gran Turismo boss Kaz Yamauchi did not like the PlayStation 3 very much

It’s been a long time since we’ve had truly great Gran Turismo game. For many, Gran Turismo 6 was a crushing disappointment after 5 showed so much potential for the series. In the meantime, Turn 10’s Forza series has eclipsed Gran Turismo as the ultimate in console racing.

According to series boss Kazunori Yamauchi, much of that has to do with the PlayStation 3 and its horrible hardware; something he very clearly didn’t like very much.

“We always have the pressure that we have to sell numbers,” Yamauchi told IGN when asked how much pressure Polyphony is under with Gran Turismo Sport and its success.

“At the same time, the conditions for GT6 were really against us, mainly because the PlayStation 3 hardware was a very difficult piece of hardware to develop for, and it caused our development team a lot of stress.

“So [GT]5 and [GT]6 was really a nightmare for us.”

Yamauchi doesn’t seem to have the same reservations about the PlayStation 4.

“Compared to that the PS4 is a piece of hardware that really has the ability to answer to our expectations,” said Yamauchi. “I’ve said this over and over again but this, Gran Turismo Sport, it really has the level of innovation you haven’t seen since Gran Turismo 1 and we’re having a lot of fun developing it, and we’re discovering a lot of things as we develop it.”

“So it was actually good for us that we started developing for PS4 later on because we then really had the time to do [research and development] on the performance of the hardware which enables us to do things like the physics-based rendering, so it was really good for us that we weren’t in a rush to get something out.”

Gran Turismo Sport really does seem like it’ll deliver the goods, and is shaping up rather nicely. Let’s just hope that for once, a GT game has decent engine sounds; something that’s always detracted from the series in my opinion.